Monday, August 17, 2009

Our African Vacation

Sorry for the lag in updates, but just pretend I'm still in Africa and keep reading...

Andrew and I decided once the school year was over that we would rush to go on a mini-vacation to Burkina Faso and Ghana. You may remember that we'd had this trip planned for over a year, but hadn't taken it because we were so busy at the school. After finals, we decided it'd be worth it to finally do it.

Crowded bus station in Bamako

Beginning of the trip (that's why I'm still smiling)

Maybe we'd been spoiled by getting rides with the gold miners in our area, but we hated the transport through Burkina into Ghana (note to everyone: don't ever try to cross West Africa by land). It took 12 hours on a crowded, un-air conditioned van to reach the Burkina border. There we had to go through all the visa procedures, baggage inspection, and general slowness in stamping things. Also, for those of you who think that traveling by Greyhound is rough, at least there are bathrooms on the bus. For our trip, the driver would randomly stop on the side of the road and people would climb over baggage, animals, and small children (all piled in the aisles of the bus) to run outside and do their business on the side of the road. Despite being a Muslim country, let me say that modesty doesn't really exist when you want to make sure the driver doesn't leave you behind because you're squatting behind a bush and he can't see you. Andrew and I had a rule that only one of us could pee at a time; the other would stay on board and make sure that the bus didn't pull away before we were done. Peeing on the side of the road is actually preferable, in my opinion, to using one of the rare public toilets at bus stations along the way. If you've ever seen Trainspotting, think of the toilet Ewan McGregor uses in the pub and you'll get a pretty good idea of what those toilets are like. While these toilets usually have a door (which sometimes even closes/locks/is tall enough to cover you), the general condition means that you don't go in unless you absolutely have to. Of course, on a 12-24 hour bus, I didn't often have a choice. But thankfully my African saviness meant that I was always prepared for these unusual experiences. First, always hold your breath while in the toilet. Second, always carry toilet paper, hand sanitizer, and water. Third, never set anything, such as a purse or jacket, on the ground. Finally, don't make eye contact with the other people sharing the toilet with you; it just makes it weirder. Probably the worst part of this is that you have to pay for the experience.

Luggage in the aisles, though nicer seats than most buses

Ghanan border

After we crossed the border, it was about 3 hours to Bobo-Diolassy, where we debarked for a couple of hours to await our connecting bus to Ouagadougou, the capital of Burkina Faso. At Bobo, we managed to make it to a Peace Corps house, where we showered, checked email, and ate a yummy dinner with other volunteers. We then caught a late night bus into Ouaga, arriving aroun 3:30am. This made it difficult to find the Peace Corps house where we were supposed to stay, and we ended up having to pay the cab driver lots of extra money for driving all over town looking for it. But we finally arrived and slept for a couple of hours before checking out Ouaga in the morning. Burkina seemed a little more developed than Mali, and more people spoke French. But the capital was larger and harder to navigate, and more expensive. We had a typical bureaucratical incident at the immigration office. At the Burkina border, we paid $20 each for a temporary transit visa, with the idea being that we could get it extended, for free, once we reached the capital. This is, of course, just a scam to get you to pay the visa fee again when you come back through. We went to the immigration office and were told it would take several days to process the visa, which didn't jive since we were planning on going directly to Ghana the next morning and then passing back through Burkina in a couple of weeks. So of course we had to pay another $20 each when we came back through since we didn't have time to get the visas renewed. Grrr.

The bus to Ghana was a nicer bus, with air conditioning, comfy seats, and really bad Ghanaian soap operas playing the entire trip. We were thankfully going to the north part of Ghana, so we didn't have to spend 28 hours from Ouaga to Accra, the capital of Ghana. Instead, after a pleasant 7 or 8 hours, we arrived in Tamale, where we checked into another Peace Corps house. Our first impressions of Ghana were that it's more developed than Mali, even in the poverty-stricken north. Streets were paved, electricity was mostly reliable, and they sold frozen chocolate milk for only 5 cents everywhere, which to me was the crowning achievement of Ghana. I can't tell you how delicious it was.

Bus to Mole National Park

From Tamale we took a pretty horrible, crowded public bus to Mole National Park to go on a safari. Despite the overpriced lodging and food, the animal visibility was awesome. We walked out of our hotel room to see baboons, warthogs, and red monkeys playing around. We saw lots of those animals all over the park, and some elephants, too. Our sights were limited to those four species, but I have to say, baboon butts are funny no matter how many you see in one day.

Elephants

Nicole and baboon

Warthogs

After Mole we had a tough decision to make: should we skip the middle of the country to race to the capital in order to see Barack Obama speak in Accra? Okay, it wasn't that difficult a decision. We hopped on an overnight bus and twelve hours later arrived in Accra. Unfortunately it was again, 3:00 in the morning, and we ended up crashing on the tile floor of a hotel room where a bunch of other volunteers were staying. After about three hours "sleep," we gathered our stuff and tried to find a taxi to take us to a cheap hotel with beds. Because of Obama's visit, all the streets were closed, and even the taxis couldn't go anywhere! We spent 30 minutes desperately wandering around (me whining and teary the whole time; I don't do well on little sleep) before we discovered the Christiansborg Hotel, which had cheap rooms (with beds!). We spent a little time trying to explore, but we couldn't even get to the Peace Corps office because the roads were closed. We finally met up with some other volunteers who helped us get there. The PC admin peeps tried to tell us we couldn't go see Obama, because we weren't on the pre-approved guest list. We decided to go to the embassy (who had organized the event) and try our luck there. After several hours of being denied, they finally allowed us to go after everyone else had left. Still, they had reserved a section for PC and embassy workers, so we were really, really close to the stage. Air Force One was in the background, ready to escort Obama back to the U.S. He and President Mills arrived and each delivered a short speech. Pres. Obama made several references to the good work of Peace Corps, which was one of the few times I felt pride in what I was doing, and then he talked about how he admired the work Ghana was doing to develop, but that development was still their responsibility, and that while the U.S. would support them, that it was up to them to change their future. That short speech made me proud to have voted for him, as it so closely echoed my own realizations about development in Africa. He and the First Lady walked the line, and I came close to shaking his hand, but Americans can be rude no matter what country they are in, and all the tall people decided to stand in front of the short people and hog the good views (Andrew was a sweetheart and stood in the back while I tried to squeeze in the front with the other tall people).

Yay for Peace Corps!

Air Force One

You wouldn't believe how Obama-crazy Africa is, especially Ghana. All the publicity they produced made it seem like he and Pres. Mills had just signed some super important treaty that allowed Ghanaians to immigrate to the U.S. It was crazy. He was only there for 23 hours, and I couldn't help but think that Ghana could have better spent that PR money on, you know, developing the country. But I guess there's something to be said for raising the morale, and improving U.S. relations with Africa.

President Obama and President Mills

After Accra, we headed to the Green Turtle Lodge on the beach. We had heard a lot of hype about this place from other volunteers, but they were pretty booked, really far out of town, and it was overcast most of the time we were there. To top it off, they didn't have any seafood (still trying to figure that one out), no fruit juices (Andrew gently pointed out that there were pineapples, oranges, and coconuts in abundance...didn't make a difference to the bartenders), and a severe shortage of alcoholic drinks, despite their expansive drink menu. Overall we were really bummed, and totally ready to call it quits after three days. What was supposed to be the highlight of our vacation was instead pretty crappy.

Sandcastle

Turtle Beach

After the beach, we took a bus to Cape Coast to see the old slave fort, where Obama had recently visited. It was very eerie and moving, and offered many interesting facts about slavery (suprisingly a small percentage of slaves ended up in the U.S.; over a 1/3 went to Brazil alone, a 1/3 to the Carribean islands, and the other 1/3 was spread throughout the Americas, with 2 million ending up in the U.S.).

Cape Coast Castle

On the ramparts

Obama Plaque

A note about ordering in a restaurant in Africa: don't ever expect things to be on the menu. I couldn't believe how difficult it was to find seafood in Ghana, but even basic things like beef were often not in stock at the moment. And after reading beautiful drink lists, it was so disappointing to find they didn't have any. Ghana is a Christian country, so alcohol was, in theory, available throughout the country. It just wasn't great alcohol.

Another side note, this one about Christianity: Ghana is the most Christian place I've ever been. I doubt even Vatican City is this religious. Every boutique, restaurant, and vendor has some catchy Christian name like: The Lord is my Shepard I Shall Not Want Bar, God is Great Hair Salon, Jesus is the One True God Car Repair. Then you balance that against someplace like the All Sex Inn, and it gets really weird. We went on a canoe ride and this guy spent the whole time trying to convert us to Christianity, which was amusing but a little annoying after the first hour. (If you think I'm making this up, I understand. It's something you truly have to see to believe).

After Cape Coast, we went to Kakum national park, where we walked on 100 feet high walkways above the rainforest. It was freaky. I about had a nervous breakdown and only made it through all seven bridges because some German lady talked me through the last couple and kept me from freaking out. Andrew of course wanted to run across the bridges and bounce around.

Treetop Bridge

We then headed to Kumasi, just to break up the long trip back to Mali and hang with more volunteers. Kumasi was very busy, and it was fun hanging out with other volunteers. Then we took a horrible, crammed bus from Kumasi to the border, about 9 hours. There, we slept on the side of the road, were attacked by mosquitos, and waited forever for the damn bus to let us back on so we could cross the border. Of course we had to pay for another damn visa, which hurt our already dwindling supply of cash, and by the time we got into Ouaga we were too late to catch the nice bus back to Mali. Instead, we had to spend the night in Ouaga, and were kicked out of the Peace Corps house at 11pm and told to find a hotel since the house was booked with Burkina volunteers, who get priority. This was super annoying, especially since they woke us up to tell us to leave. The next morning, we bought what we thought we decent seats on a bus to Mali, but got hoodwinked and had to switch companies in Bobo, which meant we were on the worst bus in the world for about 20 hours. It was so painful. The seats were broken, tiny, really uncomfortable, and they of course oversold it and overpacked it, so people were sitting in the aisles on top of luggage, so we were like little sardines. To make things worse, the bus stopped every five minutes and the windows didn't open so it was stifling the whole way, and they never stopped to let us get dinner. I have no shame in admitting that I spent most of the trip quietly crying in my seat. For me, that trip was a culmination of my African experience: Painful, uncomfortable, and completely non-sensical. It hurt so bad to think that while you can partly blame Africa's poverty on colonialism and foreign interference, Africans are direct contributors to their misery. It would be easy to say that they have lower standards than us, and that those conditions are fine for them, but I've never met anyone who likes the way things happen in their country. Yet they sit there quietly. They don't bother to try to change their lives. Its fatalism, in that they believe that's just the way things are, and its an unwillingness to accept responsibility to help themselves; instead Malians believe that its the responsibility fo the French, or other foreigners to fix things in Mali. I won't get into it much here, since I'll be sending out another email soon once I feel emotionally stable enough, but I wanted to give you an idea of how bad the transport is there, among other things.

After the worst 20 hours of my life, we arrived in Bamako at about 3:00am. When we finally arrived at our hotel, they wouldn't let us in because I'd left our tickets at the PC office. I told them I would get them in the morning but they refused. So we had to walk to another hotel where we finally got some sleep. After about 4 hours of sleep, I headed to the Medical office to do my blood and urine tests and my end of service physical. On July 23rd, I flew from Bamako to Paris to Salt Lake to Ontario, where I was so happy to have a hot shower, a warm bed, and logic back in my life. I'm still struggling with emotional issues right now, and it's especially hard being here without Andrew, but I can't tell you how happy I am to finally be home.

I hope to see some of you soon, and keep your eyes open for a "Reflection on Mali/Peace Corps" in the upcoming days.